Intent for PSHE

At Oakfield Primary School, PSHE enables our pupils to become healthy, independent, confident and responsible members of society. It aims to focus on the ‘whole child’ – to help pupils understand how they are developing personally and socially, and tackles many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.

We provide our pupils with opportunities for them to learn about rights and responsibilities whilst appreciating what it means to be a member of a diverse society. Our pupils are encouraged to develop their sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community. We want our pupils to have high aspirations, a belief in themselves and realise that anything is possible if they put their mind to it.

The PSHE programme makes a significant contribution to pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, their behaviour and safety and the school’s responsibility to promote pupils’ well-being.

A high-quality citizenship education helps to provide pupils with knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare them to play a full and active part in society.  In particular, citizenship education should foster pupils’ keen awareness of how the United Kingdom is governed and how its laws are made and upheld.  It should also prepare pupils to take their place in society as responsible citizens by providing them with the skills and knowledge to manage their money well and make sound financial decisions.

Implementation

At Oakfield Primary School, we aim to build a PSHE curriculum that enables pupils to develop skills and knowledge to allow them to have a deep and transferable understanding of the following areas when they leave primary school. Our PSHE curriculum is centred around ‘SCARF’ – Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship to support teachers in planning and delivering lessons around the three core themes: Health and Wellbeing, Relationships, and Living in the Wider World:

• Make healthy lifestyle choices
• Be able to regulate and understand their emotions to promote mental wellbeing
• Understand how to keep safe in a variety of situations
• Know how to form a range of different healthy relationships and the complexity of different relationships they will form throughout their lives
• To value others including those from different backgrounds or those that are different to them
• To understand that they have rights and responsibilities in the world and that they can make and influence change
• To understand the ways they can take care of the environment and how their choices can affect the environment, community and wider world.
• To gain an understanding of the importance of money and how to manage money sensibly.

At Oakfield our curriculum intent focuses on what children learn but also how children learn. We encourage children to become independent learners – we want children to be resourceful, take risks and be resilient when trying something new or facing a challenge. Our ‘Learning Toolkit’ provides a weekly whole school focus through assembly and during our day to day life at Oakfield.

As part of being a Healthy School we promote positive emotional health and well-being through our curriculum. We encourage children to talk about their emotions and to develop strategies to manage their feelings.  All staff are fully engaged within our pastoral support programme which includes counselling sessions for children and their families, via a qualified school-based counsellor.

The use of ‘Colour Monsters’ in Early Years and Key Stage 1 as well as ‘The Zones of Regulation’ in Key Stage 2, form an integral part of our pastoral care – allowing pupils to identify their feelings and begin to self-regulate; understand how they are feeling and gives them the opportunity to talk about how they are feeling and begin to manage their feelings accordingly.

At Oakfield Primary School, the School Council is made up of pupils from Years 1 – 6 with two pupils from each year group. The pupils are selected through a democratic process where they put themselves forward as candidates and are then voted for by their peers. By developing Pupil Voice, we establish a culture in school whereby all children have the opportunity to play an active role in decisions that affect their learning and well-being.

Pupils in Year 6 are encouraged to apply for important leadership roles of House Captain, Vice House Captain, Sports Captain and Vice Sports Captain. Pupils are also encouraged to take on other responsibilities such as Librarian, Eco-Warrior, Play Leaders etc.

Oakfield Primary School puts pupil well-being at the heart of everything we do and we have a range of strategies to help pupils negotiate the pressures as they navigate an ever-changing modern Britain.